The Sun Shines Down On Me

Poll

So, there is plenty interesting films on the horizon. I’m glad to see ‘The Rum Diary’ finally getting made. It’s perhaps my favorite book by Hunter S. Thompson and the director is no other than Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I). I’ve read the script and it’s great! It can be found on http://www.marshall-bell.com/media/RumDiary.pdf

There’s two new Werner Herzog films coming out, ‘Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’ and ‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’ .  Bad lieutenant is somewhat of a remake of Abel Ferrara’s great cult classic. The trailer just came out and to me it looks to be a letdown, lacking a lot of the grittiness of the original.. and lets face it, Cage is in it. I still trust Herzog to make a decent film, especially when he says it’s about “the bliss of evil”. David Lynch is the producer of ‘My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done’ and it has a much better cast. I think this is the Herzog film to look out for.

Trailer for Bad lieutenant: Ports of call New Orleans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s043quEQ9FY

Coppola’s ‘Tetro’ was screened at Cannes and Vincent Gallo plays the lead. It’s the first screenplay Coppola has written since ‘The Conversation’. It’s a very personal film, according to Coppola, and the trailer is awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ_XTIsMKig

Vincent Gallo has a new film coming out himself. We know very little about it except from the very cool title ‘Promises written in water’ and that it’s already filmed on 16mm. I’m very happy Gallo has decided to return to filmmaking. Buffalo 66 is one of my favorites.

‘Enter the void’ by Gaspar Noe was screened at Cannes. It received mostly good reviews, but it did’t win any awards. For what I’ve heard about the film, I expect something spectacular and uniquely visual. Noe is the guy that made the great films ‘I stand alone’ and ‘Irreversible’. Enough said.

Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ should be out soon. Mixed reviews, but it should be good. Some clips from the film can be found on http://www.filmstar.se/sv/149880/ovrigt/2009-05-23/klipp-fran-the-imaginarium-of-doctor-parnassus/  Those got me excited.. and the fact that Tom Waits plays the devil!

Please vote on your most anticipated:

Resources

I’ve added some links on my blogroll. Mainly film/screenwriting resources, which I often use.

The Creative Screenwriting podcast is highly recommended if you’re into screenwriting. Each friday they upload their podcast containing a fresh interview with a screenwriter, about the craft!

Mark Kermode is a great film reviewer. And not only because he loves Herzog. I usually respect his opinions. There is a podcast of bbc five live with film reviews and a video blog with film comments.. Just check out his awesome rant of the awful ‘pirates of the caribbean at worlds end’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Q5FESHol0

There is also Roger Eberts blog and my IMDB vote history

Screenwriting: Idea Stage

Finally, I got the time to start working on my next screenplay. This idea I got has been tormenting me for the past months.. untill today! I’ve found a solution for my problem – very exciting!

What bothers me with films like ‘Benjamin Button’ is that the writer completely avoids giving us an explanation of the phenomenon of ageing backwards (it didn’t seem strange to anyone! how likely). I’m now dealing with the super-natural myself, and I had a hard time trying to justify it.  I really feel the writer should pay his respects to the reader, or the audience, and give them some sort of a logical explanation. Sure we can argue it worked okay in ‘let the right one in’ (fantastic film), cause we didn’t really need to know where the vampire girl came from. It’s not what the story is about, the ‘classic vampire horror’ is more of an element in the mix. Still, I like it even more when things are believable; when writer gives us some sort of clue, at least. For example, David Cronenberg (very awesome director) always seemed to achieve this, paying his respect to the audience. In ‘the fly’, he gives us an sci-fi, technological explanation with the telepod business, and we can go along with it. I think that’s the same the reason why I really love Blade Runner – as a very believable dystrophic, futuristic sci-fi film. Too much fantasy kills it, for me.  I still love Terry Gilliam and fantasy films like Pan’s Labyrinth, but they will never be as great as Blade Runner (final cut, of course) – a film that I’ve now fallen completely in love with (it`s just too much the first time you see it).

Fiction is the lies in which the writer want to tell some truth (subtext, controlling idea), and it might not matter if it’s a canny, uncanny or a super-natural approach, but man, I love it when we can totally believe in the story and at the same time have a mysterious quality. This all relates to where I’m at with my fresh idea. It’s the most commercial screenplay I am to write yet.

The process of trying to justify a “well known mythology” really gave me what they in Hollywood call a “high concept idea”.  Never before have my screenplays been “high concept oriented”. It’s the stuff that sells.. supposedly! So, what is ‘high concept’?

Something ‘uniquely familiar’. For example; a fresh approach (uniquely) to a well known mythology (familiar). A better example is ‘Back to the future’: we’ve seen time-travel in films many times, but it was done in an original way at that time – A guy needs to travel back in time to make sure his parents meet; so he can exist in the present. I guess that’s high concept; uniquely familiar;  the audience needs to recognize what the film is about, but also they want to see something new.

A lesson that I’ve learned by now is that the best thing to do is to test your idea (concept) before you start working on it.  It’s the concept itself that decides the marked interest – if it has potential to sell. It’s not so much the story itself (secondary).

Justifying a familiar mythology in original way really seem to work for me. Very difficult to find the original solutions, but it’s cool to add something to a mythology that we all know something about. Of course, I will not give away my idea.. but it might be cool to be blogging about each stage in writing the screenplay.  Keeping track of stuff I`ve learned in the process.. and that’s why I’m blogging again.  The idea stage is always exciting.

What else is new.. I’m trying to make a list of all the films I’ve seen, using IMDB`s voting history. Link: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=36132699

I am Goodbye

Bonnie Prince Billy’s new video, from ‘Beware’:

What a feel good song!

Update

Blogging got boring pretty fast, but here’s some news.

I’ve completed the screenplay. 100%
It’s in Norwegian this time. So, to my Norwegian friends, if you wanna read, proof-read, whatevs, throw me a comment with email.

I will move on to the next project. A full lenght, which I aim to enter at a contest – http://www.zoetrope.com/contests/

That’s Coppola’s company. He will read the winners himself. Due in August, so I got time…. I’m not expecting to win or anything, but it’s better to write with a specific marked in mind.

i killed the party again..

Deer Tick – Art Isn’t Real

JB Smoove

JB Smoove is an exceptionally funny man.

photos